Insense feel like somewhat of a rare breed. With a penchant for chugging riffs and low-tuned guitars, it’d be easy to write off this Norwegian quartet as another djent/deathcore clone hopping on the bandwagon. But the veteran band possesses a number of qualities that set them apart from their contemporaries. First and foremost, the basis that underlies their palm-muting shenanigans is deeply rooted in thrash metal. Much of the riffing on their fifth album De:Evolution is a throwback to oldschool death/thrash with a bit of a modern twist. Yes, this means a lot of chugs and 000, but the aggressive manner in which Insense executes all of it feels refreshing and is poised to grab your attention.

The vocals run the gamut from yells reminiscent of thrash giants Havok and Death Angel to melodic cleans that actually bring Mike Patton to mind, as well as the occasional guttural screams and hardcore shouts. The instrumentation periodically dips into flashes of prog-esque complexity, but never at the cost of melody, groove or any other element that glues the songs together Particularly of note is the drumming – there’s some amazing fills and footwork on here! But the guitar work is completely respectable too, despite the heavy reliance on what is essentially djentified thrash riffs. The band avoids coming off as a one-trick pony through songwriting crutches such as throwing in ambient sections (which are almost always executed beautifully). Admittedly, the production has a lot of polish to it, but even listeners that are turned off by that style have plenty of reasons to enjoy the music.

I’ve been talking only about the album so far, but you can take more or less the same description to be true for the track ‘Lethargy‘ which we at Heavy Blog at Heavy are proud to premiere. This is the second track to be released from De:Evolution. Check out the first one, ‘Meandering’ here – it’s basically more of the same goodness. De:Evolution comes out May 23rd, so make sure you support the band if you like what you’re hearing!